This is part 2 of my interview with Allison, the originator of the #safetypin campaign in the UK. So far, #safetypin has been covered by The Telegraph, CNN, the Huffington Post and the BBC among many other media outlets.

Part 1 of the interview was posted earlier this week.

Please note that this interview was conducted on the morning of July 5, after the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling and before the fatal shooting of Philando Castile less that 24 hours later.

I would  remiss if we didn’t look back at the past 12 hours. Last night in the US, Alton Sterling, a father of five, was shot dead at point-blank range after being pinned to the ground by two white police officers in Louisiana. Sterling was black. Both of the officers’ body cameras had apparently fallen off. Officer Robert J. Kinnison, one of the two white officers involved, is an outspoken gun rights activist and Trump supporter. 
I’d feel remiss as well. My heart is breaking for Sterling’s family–there’s nothing I can say that would be enough. The sad truth is that no amount of intervention by allies or bystanders can stop an incident where you also have an armed police force informed by institutional and cultural racism. Meanwhile over here the Chilcot report is focussing on the deaths of British soldiers while making no mention of the thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq. (And for them to release the report on Eid al-Fitr–the holiday which ends Ramadan–is just perverse.) The news media is still more interested in white agency than in non-white consequence, if that makes sense–the reporting focusses on the white characters. We get the rundown of the cop’s background and his life but hear very little about the black victim. 

On your side of the pond, Scotland Yard reported yesterday that there have been three hate crimes per hour since the results of the referendum were announced. In addition, the British Pound is at a 31-year low. Do you think that this indicates an increase in the racial and economic tensions you described in the first part of our interview?
Over here… this weekend is a big Eid celebration in Trafalgar Square for the whole city to come to, celebrate and learn about their neighbours. I’ll be there. The British love a street party. In the longer term, who knows? I think as the Tory leadership contest heats up it will either become an arms race to the most restrictive of positions or the most liberal, but I can’t say which yet. Currently EU economic migrants are still having to worry that they’ll all be deported if Theresa May gets into power, plus we have the fabulous option of the Tories resurrecting Nigel Farage as a cabinet minister. Anything could happen.

I may be jumping ahead here, but have you had time to catch your breath and consider what a phase 2 for the #safetypin movement (and, yes, now I will call it a “movement”) might look like?
I don’t know what’s next for #safetypin. I’d like to continue to try to tap into the base of folk who responded so powerfully to it, even personally–I have 900 more followers on Twitter now than I did ten days ago. I’m actually currently unemployed (got laid off two months ago), so I think I will look for a new job in activism or charity work. I’d like to continue being part of the conversation and hopefully part of the solution. If that doesn’t pan out, though, there’s always marches and volunteering, and all the other little things people do to make their communities better. I’m not sure we can make a movement out of it. But I do think one major strength of #safetypin was that it showed potential allies it’s possible to be a movement of one.

I must admit that I loved #safetypin as soon as I saw it, which is why I’m so excited to be corresponding with you. Before I start wearing mine, however, I wanted ask you if taking it out of it’s original cultural context and expanding it into a symbol against racism in the United States would run counter to your goals, or dilute your message. I don’t want to culturally appropriate your idea unless you see it, not as cultural appropriation, but rather as the strengthening an anti-racism message.
I definitely don’t see the safety pin as “my idea” or something I have ownership over. Someone emailed me, really early in the campaign, to tell me that Dutch children had worn safety pins on their collars as evidence of friendliness during WWII–if an Allied pilot was downed, the pins would assure him of the kids’ allegiances, even if they didn’t speak the same language. I’m not sure if it’s true or not, but that’s the core of it –that we all recognise each other as having the right to be here. 

The terrific Nikesh Shukla tweeted, editor of the book “The Good Immigrant (go here to preorder!) tweeted “i want the safety pins to mean ‘fam, i got your back’ not ‘sir, consider me no threat’.” That’s exactly how I feel as well. I do think the narrative got a little skewed along the way, but essentially I feel the core concept has been retained, which is good. 

Britain is for everybody. This nation was built on the backs of so much unpaid labour, exploited globally during the time of empire, that there’s almost no modern country it hasn’t affected. Everyone has a place in Britain and everyone is welcome. The pin says you recognise your neighbour’s right to thrive here regardless of their race and that you will defend that right. There’s no reason that message wouldn’t fit equally well in the US. So by all means, please wear one. I’d be honoured.

Earlier this week I wrote about a growing anti-racism, anti-xenophobic campaign in Great Britain: #safetypin. Today we are honored to hear directly from the person who came up with the idea, a writer who only identifies herself by her first name, Allison.

This is the first in a two-part interview.

Allison, thank you so much for agreeing to the interview. Most of our audience is based in the US. For those who may not be familiar with the #safetypin idea (and I’ll refrain from calling it a “movement” for the moment), can you share a bit about the it and what inspired your thinking?

Thank you for asking me, Michael–I’m honoured. The idea for #safetypin came partly from the Australian #ridewithme campaign following the cafe hostage situation there a few years ago. I wanted to come up with a simple, nonverbal way for the many folks in the UK who welcome EU nationals and immigrants to show their support. There has been a very sharp spike in racist and xenophobic violence since the EU referendum, and I was hoping to create a small signal for people vulnerable to those attacks, showing that they were not alone in the UK and that their presence and their contributions are appreciated. A large part of the British population doesn’t tend to speak to strangers in public, so a badge was ideal–no conversation required, just a quiet show of solidarity. I chose a safety pin because most people have one lying around their house just waiting to be used – nobody would have to buy anything, there would be no cost to produce, and no branding or slogans were needed.

Very interesting. Let’s briefly talk about the referendum. Prior to the vote a British friend of mine shared a video editorial done by (EU legal scholar) Professor Michael Dougan. What struck me were the similarities between the Leave campaign in the UK and the Trump presidential campaign in the US. Have you heard much about the US presidential campaign on your side of the pond?

Definitely. My mother is always threatening to move in with us in the UK if Trump gets in.

What strikes me most about the Leave camp in the UK and the Trump camp in the US is how much of the supporters’ strong feelings seem to stem from the idea that the changing, globalised world has left them behind. They seem to make up huge percentages in locations with industries that have collapsed, such as coal or steel, and are against meddling by “big gov’t” – whether the US federal gov’t or the EU – even though they are often hugely subsidised by those organisations. I think to these people anyone who doesn’t resemble their backgrounds is tangible, walking evidence of how the world has, effectively, “replaced” them. They are fighting to go back to a world that is, in my opinion, no longer viable.

Were you born in the US?

Yep, born and raised. I moved to the UK when I was 24. Before that I had lived in New England during my childhood, college in Philly, and NY state and San Francisco after graduating.

When you say that the Trump/Leave constituents may feel they have been “replaced” by people who don’t “resemble” them, it sounds like you’re talking about an inherent fear of people with different ethnic and racial backgrounds. 

Ethno racial divisiveness like you’re describing does’t usually appear overnight. Do you think that these sentiments were present in the years leading up to the referendum?

I know it was – I saw a lot of racism in the small Northern town where I lived the first four years. It has a very working-class white population, but the university there attracts students from all over the globe. Students who were clearly “foreign” got a lot of grief there – the walk up to our college was long and far out of of the city centre, and Chinese and Middle Eastern students used to get eggs and glass bottles thrown at them on a regular basis as they walked back from town. 

In both the US and the UK, where (for different reasons) the white hegemony is the political “normal”, I think there’s major fear of nonwhites because they are 1) often vilified by media such as the Daily Mail and by politicians, and 2) in large part absent from a majority of non-urban areas. I would say, though, that racism over here has a different context than in the US for several reasons, most notably because in the 20th century Britain invited many residents of former colonies to come live and work in the UK. Are you familiar with the phrase “Windrush generation”? A huge number of men from the Caribbean came to Britain after the war to replace the white Brits killed in WWII by taking their place in the workforce. The same happened after the partition of India and Pakistan – many South Asians emigrated to Britain and started businesses. In many cases the people who are being harassed now in the UK are descendents of immigrants who were explicitly invited to join the UK by its government. The conversation in the US about immigrants seems to be divided from the conversation about, say, black Americans who are descendents of slaves. In the UK these people are all being lumped together into the “other”.

That’s horrendous! It also serves as a reminder as to why safe places are so important, as are ideas like your #safeypin. It sounds like the idea was born of escalated racial tension in a divided country (at least judging by the referendum results). What sort of reactions have you gotten?

I would say that all the reactions to #safetypin have had a positive effect, even though not all of them were positive on the surface. There was also definitely a split between people who weren’t vulnerable to abuse and people who were. I’ve gotten lots of messages of support and agreement from the former–only a tiny minority (hello Piers Morgan!) mocked it as a useless gesture. 

The response from immigrants, EU and non EU, was also pretty positive, although some questioned the “passive” nature of the gesture.

The most critical voices–and I thank them unreservedly for speaking up–came from black and minority ethnic (BAME–the equivalent UK acronym to PoC) Brits. These are individuals who have been experiencing racism for years, sometimes generations, and who were extremely sceptical that this campaign was anything other than (to quote one guy on Twitter) “the visual equivalent of Not All White People”. I reached out to some of them to communicate that I was listening, and wrote a few threads on my own Twitter feed to address their concerns. The majority of criticism focussed on the idea that a pin alone is useless – action is required. I completely agree with this, and to be honest, until these criticisms started to come in I had never imagined that someone would just put the pin on and then think the job was done, or that they didn’t have to intervene if actual racist abuse started up near them. It was the response of this group that helped push the pin from a sign saying “come, sit next to me!” to a pledge to combat racism in all its forms.

A mixed response means that people are giving serious thought to your ideas and that they value your thinking. I think the mixed reaction and the dialogue which ensues means that you’ve tapped into a feeling–a set of values, perhaps–that many people feel the need to express.

I’m so grateful for the dialogue that ensued. The hashtag not only allowed people to express their support for a movement, but also gave those angry with the general state of race relations in the UK a readership they might not otherwise have had. Even if everyone had decided the safety pin idea was idiotic, at least a conversation would have been got going. I certainly think there was a huge number of people–still is–in the UK desperate to do something, anything, to counteract the waves of hate we’ve seen. Unfortunately a lot of British are still culturally not that good at being seen to do things publicly–public attention is kind of taboo. I think it’s good I was a loudmouth American in this instance. 🙂

I’m gonna go out on a limb here for a moment, as this idea has occurred to me before, but never so powerfully as in the last few weeks: While it is of course impossible for a white person to “know what it’s like” to be a PoC in a white world, the way I come to terms with black feelings of fear, anger, injustice and helplessness is by drawing a parallel between those feelings and my own as a woman who often is on her own in a public space. I know that not all men are rapists, but I have to remember, on a certain level, that all men are capable of committing harm against my body in a way which society is still struggling to place in an appropriate (i.e. resoundingly condemned) context (see the Stanford rapist etc.). I don’t hate and fear men, but I know that a small percentage of them are dangerous to me, and I know that that percentage does not identify itself immediately, so I have to be on guard. I imagine there is a similar level of reasoning for people of colour in a white world. Understanding that parallel helps me to understand the experiences, even if I can never truly step into another’s shoes on that front. I think how I would feel if a man started to try to “explain” sexism to me and my blood boils, so why would I ever try to explain what is and isn’t racist to a person who lives that? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that women make better allies, but I do think that women and PoC have this in common, at least.

Our conversation continues this Wednesday!

Michael Maliner is a festival blogger.